& the truck garners 11 miles per gallon.
Propane powers the refrigerator.
Pine trees sway up top in the storm.
The air is clean. Smoke burns itself
alive in the campground bathroom.
Hot July. Mosquitoes swirl the drains.
Lake Superior replenishes itself & I mourn
the groundhogs moving on from their mother’s den.
“Poco y poco”, the Padre said, brick by brick. You can’t quite mortar
between the limestone as you would with cement.
It expands and contracts. Alive in a field
the grass is long enough for crickets, for cows to graze.
You know—
on a road trip—how
many varieties of 87
octane gasoline is mixed up in that truck’s tank?
Half in Ogallala, Nebraska. Another
three-fourths in Fort Morgan, Colorado.
Even the smell of the CAFO persists.
Your old neighborhood, pulverized gravel.
The back bottom floor of the two-flat,
somebody’s farm.